The efforts of the prosecution were directed to showing that the man claiming to be Jesse Bunkley was in reality Elijah Barber, who in 1824-25 was a wagoner who hauled lumber from Grace's Mill near Macon, who was also known in Upson County, and who had served in the Florida war. Some of the witnesses who had never known Bunkley recognized the claimant as a man who had called himself Barber. Some of the witnesses who had known Jesse from his boyhood testified that they recognized the claimant as Bunkley on sight. Bunkley had various scars on his face, neck, and body. The claimant exhibited all these to the jury. One of the witnesses remembered that Bunkley bore the marks of a snake bite on one of his legs. The claimant immediately showed these marks. Hundreds of questions had been put to the claimant to test his memory. A great many he answered correctly, a great many others he failed to answer; but his replies to all vital questions were wonderfully clear and satisfactory. The jury was out but a short time before it returned, bringing in a verdict of guilty; and the claimant was sentenced to the penitentiary, where he served out his term.
This verdict and sentence settled the case in law, but it remained as unsettled as ever in the public mind. The writer of this has heard it discussed on more than one occasion among old ladies and gentlemen who knew Bunkley, and who saw the claimant; and, without exception, they declared that the verdict of the jury was cruelly unjust.
And yet, if any wrong was done, Bunkley himself was to blame for it. Being a young man of fortune and of the fairest prospects, he owed it to himself, his family, his friends, and to society at large, to become a good citizen, so that his ample means might be properly employed. Instead of that, he became a rowdy and a rioter, spending his days and his nights in evil company and in dissipation. If the claimant in this mysterious case was really Jesse Bunkley, it may be said of him that his sins had found him out.
GEORGIA WIT AND HUMOR.
The wit and humor of Georgia stand by themselves. They have no counterpart in any other section of the country. Many attempts have been made to imitate them, but there is always something lacking. The flavor, the "bouquet," the aroma, is gone. The sun, the soil, the air, and even the spring water, seem to have something to do with it. Just what, nobody knows. Wit and humor are elusive,—they are unsubstantial. On the other hand, the Georgia watermelon is something solid. It may be handled and felt. It may be "thumped" and "plugged" and tested. Those who know what a watermelon is and should be, know that there is none to compare with the melons that are grown in Georgia, no matter what the variety. The same may be said of the wit and humor that belong to Georgia. An old man—Uncle Tom Norris he was called, on account of his gray hairs—was once heard to say (speaking professionally), "Let me clap a drop of the low-wines to my tongue, and I'll tell you what branch the fire was kindled on." He was a distiller, and knew his business. One need not be an expert to say the same of Georgia humor. It is almost possible to tell the very militia district in which it originated. It carries not only the flavor, but the color.
For a hundred years Georgia has remained the most democratic part of the country. The sons of the richest men were put in the fields to work side by side with the negroes, and were thus taught to understand the importance of individual effort that leads to personal independence. It thus happened that there was a cordial, and even an affectionate, understanding between the slaves and their owners, that perhaps had no parallel elsewhere. The poorer whites had no reason to hold their heads down because they had to work for their living. The richest slave owners did not feel themselves above those who had few negroes or none. When a man called his neighbor "Colonel," or "Judge," it was to show his respect, nothing more. For the rest, the humblest held their heads as high as the richest, and were as quick, perhaps quicker, in a quarrel.
The Virginians and North Carolinians who settled in the Broad River region intermarried, and spread out over middle Georgia. Those who were not akin were bound to each other by ties of long acquaintanceship; but the homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its peculiarities, and every neighborhood boasted of its humorist,—its clown, whose pranks and jests were limited by no license. Out of this has grown a literature which, in some of its characteristics, is not matched elsewhere on the globe; but that which has been preserved by printing is not comparable, either in volume or merit, with the great body of humor that has perished because of the lack of some one industrious enough to chronicle it.